The Trump administration has handed out no-bid contracts this year to overhaul some of Washington’s most famous landmarks, including Lafayette Park and the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Now, it is using a no-bid contract to spruce up some of the capital’s more obscure features: four largely overlooked statues near the National Mall.
The statues, featuring 19-foot-tall humans and horses, have been deteriorating for decades at the end of two busy bridges. But this spring, the government decided that the figures needed to be covered in 23.75-karat gold leaf, and that this painstaking job needed to be done before the country’s 250th birthday.
The government’s solution was a familiar one. The Trump administration said again that it needed to bypass the legally required process of seeking competitive bids.
It handed a contract now worth $5.1 million directly to a handpicked vendor called the Gilders’ Studio, based in Maryland. The contract was first reported by the news site NOTUS.
The National Park Service “must have this work completed by July 4, 2026,” the agency said in a public memo justifying its decision not to consider other bids.
In the memo, the Park Service conceded it did not have time to conduct extensive research about other potential bidders. Still, it concluded that “there are no other vendors known that can perform this work.”
The statues, installed in the 1950s, are divided into pairs called the Arts of Peace and the Arts of War. One set sits on Washington’s Memorial Bridge. The other sits on a bridge over a prominent parkway.
The four were originally made of bronze but covered in gold, then covered again in the 1970s. Since then, however, the gold has largely flaked away, leaving dull figures overshadowed by the massive monuments nearby.
When Mr. Trump launched a broad makeover of Washington landmarks last year, repairing monuments and statues across the capital, these statues were left out.
In late March, however, the Park Service began to treat them as a high priority, according to internal documents obtained by The New York Times. The documents, which have not been previously reported, indicate that the Park Service saw the statues as “a visible, high-impact example of how the N.P.S. is responding to presidential directives.”
The documents say that the Park Service estimated in late March that the repair work would cost about $2.4 million. Katie Martin, a spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which oversees the Park Service, declined to say why the cost of the contract was roughly double that.
Ms. Martin instead provided a written statement saying that President Trump was “fulfilling his commitment to make D.C. safe and beautiful.”
Three of the four statues are now covered in scaffolding, as workers add gold leaf and repair the granite bases.
The Gilders’ Studio did not respond to a request for comment. Contracting records show it was previously awarded smaller projects to repair other Washington-area monuments.
Edward Stierli, a senior regional director of the nonprofit National Parks Conservation Association, said his group applauded the efforts to repair and improve monuments around Washington. But he said the Trump administration’s repeated use of no-bid contracts increased the risks that those repairs would cost more, and produce lower-quality results.
“In Americans’ own front yards, in their homes, they’re probably getting multiple bids” before hiring contractors to do major projects, Mr. Stierli said. “That should be the same for the National Mall.”
David A. Fahrenthold is a Times investigative reporter writing about nonprofit organizations. He has been a reporter for two decades.
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